With the lined up global summits and others that have since been held, 2015 has been dubbed as a watershed year for international development. Next week, global leaders will be gathering at the UN headquarters in New York to retire the Millennium Development Goals and adopt the Sustainable Development Goals. In November, the spotlight will shift to Paris and the crucial negotiations on a new climate change agreement. And, as the Africa Progress Panel – a think-tank that makes policy recommendations for African political leaders and civil society – compellingly observes, energy is the link connecting the global poverty agenda and climate change. The Panel, which includes Nelson Mandela’s widow, Graca Machel, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan “consists of ten distinguished individuals from the private and public sector who advocate for equitable and sustainable development for Africa.” The carbon-intensive energy systems now driving economic growth are locked into a collision course with the ecological systems that define our planetary boundaries. The Panel observes that averting that collision – while eradicating poverty, building more inclusive societies and meeting the energy needs of the world’s poorest countries and people – is the defining international cooperation challenge of the 21st century. Climate change demands that we rethink the relationship between energy and development. As one of the way forward, the Panel observes through its flagship publication, Africa Progress Report (APR), it will require decisive action on the part of Africa’s leaders, not least in reforming inefficient, inequitable and often corrupt utilities that have failed to develop flexible energy systems to provide firms with a reliable power supply and people with access to electricity. Africa’s energy challenge is substantial. Over 600 million people still do not have access to modern energy, the Report notes. The 2015 Africa Progress Report titled, Power, People, Planet: Seizing Africa’s Energy and Climate Opportunities, observes how “shocking” it is that Sub-Saharan Africa’s electricity consumption is less than that of Spain and how, on current trends, it will take until 2080 for every African to have access to electricity. Modern energy means clean cooking facilities that don’t pollute household air. An estimated 600,000 Africans die each year as a result of household air pollution, half of them children under the age of five. On current trends, the APR says, universal access to non-polluting cooking will not happen until the middle of the 22nd century. Africa’s lack of energy means it has a tiny carbon footprint. African leaders have every reason to support international efforts to minimise greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, they urgently need more power to boost and transform their economies and to increase energy access. The 2015 summits provide a platform for deepening international cooperation and providing a down-payment on measures with the potential to put Africa on a pathway towards an inclusive low-carbon energy future and the world on a pathway to avoid climate catastrophe. All countries stand to lose if we fail to achieve the international goal of restricting global warming to below 2˚C above pre-industrial levels. Africa will lose the most. The Africa Progress Report observes that despite 15 years of sustained economic growth, power shortages, restricted access to electricity and dependence on biomass for fuel are undermining efforts to reduce poverty. The energy gap between Africa and the rest of the world is widening. Sub-Saharan Africa is desperately short of electricity. The region’s grid has a power generation capacity of just 90 gigawatts (GW) and half of it is located in one country, South Africa. Excluding South Africa, consumption averages around 162 kilowatt hours (kWh) per capita per year. This compares to a global average of 7,000 kWh. As an example, the report says it would take the average Tanzanian around eight years to consume as much electricity as an American uses in one month. By extrapolation, without exception, the figure is the same across the East African Community. But, can the world prevent catastrophic climate change while building the energy systems needed to sustain growth, create jobs and lift millions of people out of poverty? That question goes to the heart of the defining development challenges of the 21st century. And the difficult answer to the question is what makes 2015 a watershed year for international development.
